Christmas Photos

Last night I made my husband take pictures of the kids for a nice picture to put in the Christmas cards. Wow was that a lot of work! Getting a five year old, 3 year old and 18 mo. old to all sit nicely all at the same time was next to impossible. It took a lot of photos, some mild threatening, cajoling and general chaos but we did finally get one that will work and a lot of silly ones that are still nice to have.
And yesterday when I should have been doing other things, like cleaning, I decided to make Christmas dresses for the girls dolls. I thought I could get away with just one but when the younger daughter saw the dress she had to have one too. Why I thought they could share I'll never know. But now they and their dolls are ready for Christmas. And while I was at it I made a toy mouse for the cat. I used this pattern from PimpStitch for a mouse ornament and turned it into a toy by filling up the mouse with half batting and half catnip and left off the ribbon to hang it. The cat seemed to enjoy it for the photo shoot and wondered what happened to it when I took it away to wait for Christmas. If your wondering about the pirate fabric it's because the cat's name is Blackbeard, we're big fans of pirates in this house. 18th century ones that is.And now that all the silly things are made I've finally picked up my needles to start the hat for my sister-in-law for Christmas. I got the book "Last Minute Knitted Gifts" for my birthday so I'm using the hat pattern out of there and I bought some amazing wool by Malabrigo that's soft purplish merino wool that I'm in love with. I'm planning on making myself a pair of fingerless mittens from the same book with the rest of it. I better get it all going Christmas will be here in seven days! Whew.